Typewriter Girls in Turn-of-the-Century Fiction: Feminism, Labor and Modernity

George Gissing’s The Odd Women, Grant Allen’s in The Type-writer Girl, and Ivy Low’s The Questing Beast see typewriting as benefitting the New Woman, all with common themes: that within this new role traditional ideas of femininity are not challenged to a great degree; that the entry into the labour marketplace is hardly as freeing as initially imagined; and that typists are subject to objectification and sexualisation. All three novels also have “moments of escape” from everyday life for the central characters, where fantasies concerning sex and love are contemplated as alternative routes to self-definition, signalling departures from thoughts of labour and feminist undertakings. But these novels diverge in terms of the results of these fantasies, offering differing perspectives on questions of feminism and work. This discussion argues that while the escapist moments indicate skepticism towards feminism and labour as modes of self-definition, that skepticism is not a repudiation of both but a way to explore the notion of fantasizing as a creativity that contrasts to the mundane language production of the typewriter girl—a creativity that is connected to a more fulfilling form of labour to counter anxieties about feminism and modern forms of labour. [195 words]